


In the Desert - Sam's Shifting Angel

by Jenosavel



Series: Sam's Shifting Angel [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood Drinking, Childbirth, F/M, Family, Hallucination Lucifer (Supernatural) | Hallucifer, Interspecies Romance, Original Mythology, Pain, Pregnancy, Season/Series 07, Slow Burn, Tragic Romance, Vampires, original creature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 14:17:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20931608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenosavel/pseuds/Jenosavel
Summary: Sam and Dean met a new kind of creature not mentioned in any lore. She came with a tale that was difficult to believe and then disappeared just as quickly. End of story? Not quite. When Sam sets out into the desert for a solo camping trip, his mind drifts over a lot of topics, and one of them is her.But thinking of her might as well be a summons.This simple camping trip will quickly become anything but simple.-----A multi-part entry in the Sam's Shifting Angel series. If you haven't read A Day Without Yesterday, you'll enjoy this fic more after reading that one first.





	1. Into the Desert

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place immediately preceding S7E8. References events from S5 - S7E8. 
> 
> Contains spoilers for S5 - S7E8.

Lucifer's taunts had become particularly cruel ever since Dean's murder of Amy. 

_ Don't blame Dean, Sam. He just killed a monster. All your friends are monsters. Just like you. _

But it wasn't even what Dean did that got to Sam. It was the complete lack of respect he did it with, the utter disregard for how important this was to him. 

_ Your brother doesn't respect you. How could he? After everything you've done? He always has to clean up your messes. _

Sam was the one who wanted a normal life. Friends, family, a place to call home. He didn't have many friends out there, and the few he did have he'd been losing left and right lately. Precious childhood memories, the thinnest of feeble roots, were being ripped out wholesale and it left him feeling raw and hollow. 

_ Now that is a sweet expression. Torment so deep! Oh you really were made for me, Sam. Let's keep going! Who should I scratch off next? And should it be Dean that kills them this time, or should we see what it feels like when it's Bobby? _

Sam needed time away. Even just the sight of his brother was a twist of the knife. Betrayed and disrespected by the only family he had. Caught between being alone or having his friends murdered.

This was all too easy for Lucifer.

So Sam left, at least for a while, and the distance helped. Being alone and surviving it helped take the teeth out of that side of the threat. He loved Dean, but he could live without him if it came to that. And with one side of the pincher attack diffused, that gave him space to maneuver around the other. Amy had lived a long time without killing, and she'd been left in peace all those years. When she made the choice to take a life again, she'd opened herself up to hunters. It wasn't just Dean. Any other hunter might have showed up and done the same thing. She'd been faced with an impossible, unfair choice, but that didn't exempt her from the consequences of making it. Sometimes life was unfair that way. 

_ That's it, Sam. Build yourself back up. Gotta have room to fall when the next one comes along. Wouldn't be any fun otherwise. _

Of course, coming to terms with Amy's death didn't automatically mean he forgave Dean. The callous lies were a pattern that Sam wasn't sure his brother could break, and for his own part, Sam wasn't sure how much longer he wanted to tolerate that kind of disrespect.

_ Oh! I know who we should off next! What was her name now? That one from the time loop. _

Dawn. 

_ Dawn! That's it. Dean really didn't like her, and she didn't even need to kill anyone to get on his bad side. That'd be a particularly sweet torment, don't you think? _

Sam hadn't thought about her in a long time. Ever since she'd promised to come when he called and otherwise not bother him, she hadn't popped up once. At first Sam had chalked up the visions of her to Lucifer's handiwork, but if that were true, why hadn't he pulled her out again since? Heavens knows he'd impersonated Dean a handful of times at least, and Bobby a couple of times too. 

It was possible that the visions had been her own doing. She was some kind of angel-adjacent creature afterall. And if they had been her doing, then she was the only other soul out there that knew the torments he faced. 

In that moment, Sam almost reached for her. A part of him wondered how she was doing, yearned to do the math, to count out the months since they'd met, and dreaded what that number might tell him.

_ Oh, let's off her soon, while it's still a two-for-one! _

Sam grimaced despite himself, and pushed the thought of her out of his mind, as far out of mind as he could. He didn't think of her again for a couple of months, not until their annual Vegas trip rolled around.

* * * * *

Sam was doing things a little differently this year. Less bars and casinos, more planning and dirt and desert.

The plan was for six days, three days out and three days back, all of it on foot. It was a little crazy. Even in these cooler months, carrying enough water for such a hike was brutal. It was also exhilarating though, being alone in the desert wilderness. And Lucifer hated it, which was always a plus.

_ Really Sam? Torturing yourself now? For fun? It's no fun when you think it's fun. _

His taunts became fewer and fewer as they walked, falling off into sullen silence.

For Sam's part, he daydreamed as he walked, mind wandering back and forth across so many topics, some of which he hadn't thought about in years. There were childhood memories half forgotten, treasured moments and painful ones alike. 

Towards dusk of that first day, as he debated the best spot to throw down a tent, his mind came around to Dawn. She was out there somewhere, carrying a part of him along with her just as he, apparently, carried a part of her with him. It was disconcerting to not remember how that bond had been forged, to not feel any part of the closeness it implied, and he'd done a good job of not thinking about it until now. The desert had a way of bringing out old memories though. 

Sam thought about it all the while he was pitching his tent. How much of her soul was in him? Had it changed who he was? Would he know it if it had? 

Once the tent was up, Sam sat on the rapidly cooling earth. If he'd been camping anywhere else he'd have also built a fire, but not this time. The plan was to survive on cold trail mix and water and anything the desert happened to throw his way, but having a plan and acting on it were two different things. As the stars came out and the chill of night settled over the open space, he wished he had a fire anyway. 

There, alone on the soft, sandy ground beneath those cold sparkling lights, he finally reached for her. 

"Dawn," he said softly into the night, "are you out there? Listen, I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry I can't remember, and I'm sorry that you had to find me at such an awkward time in my life. You deserve better than these silences, and if you want, I think I'm ready to talk."

"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Dawn appeared beside him, standing and staring up at the starry sky.

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "You don't see them like this as often anymore. It's easy to forget just how many there are." 

"Harder to forget," Dawn mused, kneeling down beside him, "when the urge to swim among them is always in the back of your head." 

"Can't say I know what that's like."

Sam took a good look at Dawn. She was much the same as he'd seen her last, slight but well fleshed, healthy, and with the forgettable kind of face that hunters would envy. One thing was different this time though. The vision of her wavered, watery and transparent and almost ghost-like.

_ She doesn't look so hot. Maybe she's dying all on her own. Maybe Dean found her while you were out here. _

"Are you alright?" Sam asked, very deliberately ignoring Lucifer. 

"Our connection is thinning, that's all." Dawn cast an eye at Lucifer, whose apparition was as strong and solid as ever. She hesitated a moment, then added, "and I guess I'm a little distracted too." 

As if to prove the point, the vision of her steadied, though it didn't quite solidify, and then a moment later it wavered again worse than before. 

_ Yup. Dying. _

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "Holding on to you is difficult right now. I don't think I can maintain this much longer."

_ D-Y-I-N-G _. 

"Then, maybe you could come?" Sam said carefully. He didn't want to impose, but now that he'd thought about it, he really did want to talk. 

Dawn shook her head, though. "Walking through the desert? As fun as that would be, I'm not up for it right now." 

"That's alright." Sam shook his head. It had been a long shot, anyway. "This was sudden. If now's not a good time, I get it." 

Dawn considered him a moment. "I'll tell you what. Tomorrow night if you still want to talk, call me again and I'll come in person." 

"That's… That'd be great," Sam replied, but Dawn wasn't finished. 

"But if I come in person," she said, "it will be… complicated. It might not stay the quiet chat you have in mind."

Sam swallowed. There were a couple things that could mean, none of them particularly pleasant. He took a deep breath and nodded. 

"Tomorrow then, if you haven't changed your mind." Her last words echoed even as the vision of her dissolved into the desert air. 


	2. Desert Stars

The next day Sam's mind was full as he hiked. He didn't have with him any of the journals they kept, so he couldn't be certain exactly how much time had passed since they'd escaped the time loop with Dawn, but a rough figuring put it at damn close to nine months. 

If he called her tonight, would she come with a newborn babe in arms? Or would she come with empty arms and ready to pop? Either way the desert was no place for her to be, and as the day wore on, Sam's resolve hardened. He wouldn't call her. He wouldn't drag her out here into the middle of nowhere. He'd already wasted so much time deciding what he wanted, nine whole months apparently. He could wait a little longer until she was safer. 

_ Aw c'mon Sam. If she came, maybe you could off her yourself. That'd be a nice change of pace, and the desert would be a great place for it, you know. No one to overhear. Plenty of space to hide a body. Plenty of hungry scavengers to clean up after. _

Sam felt good about his decision to keep his distance, and even better as the day turned to afternoon. Life felt simple and free out here. No scowling Dean over his shoulder, no hunts, no guilt. But as the daylight stretched into shadows and the first stars began to appear, his earlier resolve wavered. 

He set up camp, again determined to go without a fire even though there was plenty of dry scrub to be gathered. Then he sat beneath the stars as the night settled in velvety around him. 

Without a fire it was dark, the sharp edged contrasty kind of dark that it was hard to imagine when you spent all your time around human habitation. The sky was the brightest thing out here, the only thing he could see well, and staring up at its shimmering blanket turned his mind back to Dawn. 

What was it like to move through that glittering ocean? How much of it had she been to? There were so very many stars, more than could be counted, and many times more dark little rocks around them. He'd spent his life obsessed with the mysteries of this one Earth, never really stopping to consider what else was out there, but now that he did, he felt humbled. Small. He wanted to share this feeling with someone. 

"I'm here," Dawn's voice was strong and clear as she said it, and while it was difficult to see much in the dark, Sam could make out the shape of her standing beside where he sat. Her silhouette answered one question. She was still pregnant. Very pregnant. 

_Didn't miss out on the two-for-one. Nice. _

"Dawn, you shouldn't be out here," Sam sputtered reflexively, scrambling to his feet. 

"What, because I'm pregnant?" Dawn scoffed and settled herself to the ground while Sam stared. "Or because the asshole in your head wants to murder me?" 

"I didn't call you," Sam protested. "Not this time. You'd be better off-" 

"In a hospital? Please." Sam could hear the eye roll in her voice. "Humans have been pregnant in the desert almost as long as there've been humans, and besides, have you forgotten what I am? I wouldn't have come if it put me in danger."

_ Well, I didn't give her much choice. _

Sam hesitated. She had a point. If she could conjure such detailed visions by plucking at his optic nerve, then what could she do to her own body? Hell, she'd turned her hand into a gun and then back. Healing herself like an angel was probably easy. 

"What's it like?" Sam asked, putting his fears aside and settling down beside her. "Space, I mean. The stars, all that." 

_ Empty. _

"Cold," she answered quickly, the way someone did when they'd thought too much about a thing. "Not a painful sort of cold, though. Bracing. Invigorating. When I try to explain it in human terms, I think it's a lot like swimming."

"Swimming?" Sam laughed. "That's a little clichéd." 

"But it's true enough." She did something with her hands that Sam couldn't quite see in the darkness. It might have been a shrug. 

"Okay, so… swimming," he prompted. "Tell me about it." 

Lucifer groaned. 

"Well, the obvious clichéd part is the buoyancy," she began, "but just because it's clichéd doesn't make it less true. It's the part I think about most often. I miss being untethered. Once you've lived weightless and free it's hard to think about much else down inside a gravity well."

Sam had never really been caught up by such ideas, though he knew other people had. The allure of weightlessness didn't actually hold much allure, however, after you'd been hoisted off your feet by demons more times than you could count. It didn't symbolize freedom for him. More like helplessness. Being trapped.

"So what else?" he asked, absently rubbing his throat. "There has to be more than weightlessness." 

"The currents," she continued without a pause. "In water you can feel all these currents moving against your skin. Well, in space I feel currents too, though they're usually currents of energy and radiation or small particles rather than dense matter. Light pressure, solar wind, any number of things. You can sail on those currents sometimes, catch them and let them pull you along."

_ Booooring_. 

"But really," she continued, ignoring Lucifer as easily as Sam did, "the thing that really makes the metaphor for me is the waves."

"Waves?"

"When you're swimming in water, you're at the mercy of the waves, right? If they're there, you move with them. They define the shape of the landscape you're moving through." 

"And in space?" Sam prompted.

"That's how I perceive gravity," Dawn answered, "at least when I'm up there outside a well. I mean, gravity has literal waves, for one, but it also defines the shape of the landscape. It defines when and how you'll move, and you can either use that, go with it, or you can burn energy fighting against it."

_Don't bother thinking that's too deep, by the way. I'm just making this all up as I go. _

Sam stared up at the stars. It was hard for him to imagine, and it didn't really help that he and Dean had never done much swimming, even as kids. It was good to hear Dawn talk, though, to learn a little something about her and nudge the one-sided nature of their relationship a tiny bit closer toward balanced. If balanced was even really possible between a human and an angel-relative.

"So you can feel the shape of gravity?" he asked. "That must have been useful in dealing with the time loop. Some of the stuff in your journal was really technical, especially that stuff about gravity warping spacetime in on itself."

_ Also boring_. 

She laughed. "That's all you, Mr. Stanford. Space and it's movements are intuitive to me. Trying to chart out equations of it all is as bizarre as trying to play catch by writing out parabola math."

"Wait, I wrote those specs?" Sam was taken aback. The writing could have been his. It was clear and nondescript, all capitals, carefully spaced, and in straight clean lines. It didn't match the diary entries at all, which were flowier and wandering, but he'd chalked that up to the difference between just wanting to jam out some thoughts versus wanting technical details to actually be readable later. 

_ Aaand, stroking your ego now. _

"Yep," Dawn agreed. "All you. I couldn't build half that stuff again even with the notes and remembering having done it the first time. It's like the difference between using your own arm for something and needing to program a robot arm to do the same thing. I'm fine as long as I have the energy to do things myself, but ask me to make a robot do it? Good luck."

Somehow Sam had pictured Dawn as the one who had really fixed the time loop, with himself along for the ride as a useful pawn or a weird blood battery, but this painted a different picture. 

"It was a team effort," Dawn agreed, hearing something of his thoughts even as she sat here in the flesh. "The final push was me, inverting the aberrant warp so time could flow linearly again, but I couldn't have both fixed it and gotten myself up there. I didn't have the strength. I'd never have been able to do it without you."

_ Well isn't this sweet. _ Lucifer made gagging noises. _ Time for something a little more interesting, don't you think? _

Without warning, Sam felt a wooden handle in his palm. He recognized it immediately as the knife, the one thing among their tests that had hurt Dawn. His heart beat faster. 

_ Ah yes. Much more interesting, don't you agree? _

"Enough!" Dawn's voice was cold and sharp in the darkness. "Sam, may I?"

"W-what?" Sam had no idea what was happening, could hardly focus with the feel of the blade in his hand. 

"May I banish him? For tonight, at least." 

_ She's bluffing. _

"But I thought," Sam tripped over his own tongue and shook his head. "Souls. You said… I thought you couldn't." 

"I also said there are tricks," she reminded him, "and as long as I'm here physically, there are a lot more tricks I can leverage. Not without your permission though." 

"Do it." Sam breathed without hesitation. His hand was cramping from how tightly he gripped the blade, the muscles in his forearm twitching. 

Dawn leaned towards him, reaching up and placing both hands on his cheeks. 

And just like that, the knife disappeared from his palm.

"L-lucifer?" Sam asked hesitantly. Only silence answered. 

"Don't go looking for him," Dawn warned. "He's still there, just quieted for the moment."

Sam couldn't really believe it, not yet. Lucifer loved to disappear and reappear for effect all the time. This might be no different. Dawn sensed his hesitation, though, and changed the subject. 

"You once asked me how old I was," she said with amusement, and the sudden absurdity of it yanked Sam's mind away from darker things.

"Rude," he chuckled. "But I'm guessing you answered, if you're bringing it up again." 

"Sure did," she laughed, and despite the dark Sam could picture the grin on her face. "You're only supposed to be embarrassed when you're old, and I'm practically a baby." 

"So how old are you, Dawn?" he asked, grinning despite himself. 

"9.6 million Earth years," she answered, "give or take some thousands. I might have lied to Cas about being older than Michael. My closest sister is though. Three times older, like I said." 

"Wow." Sam nearly choked on the word. "And that's a baby to you, huh?" 

"Not even as old as this rock we're on," she agreed. "We don't really have a coming of age ceremony, not like humans do, but you can't really consider yourself an adult until you've outlived at least a couple stars. I haven't even witnessed a planetary extinction and repopulation event yet."

"No?" Sam frowned. "Then, you haven't been on this planet all that long." 

"Only five or six thousand years, maybe," she agreed. "Hence why I'm not great with human souls yet. Haven't been working with them even as long as the youngest angels here. Organic chemistry though, that doesn't change a whole lot, place to place. The details maybe, but not the patterns. Atoms are atoms." 

She paused, and despite the fact that he couldn't see, Sam recognized hesitation. 

"What is it?" 

"I usually don't stay somewhere any longer than ten thousand years or so. The itch to wander gets too strong. I'm feeling that itch a lot these days."

"I can understand that," Sam admitted. "Different scale, different scope, of course, but wandering is wandering." 

"Yeah..." Dawn's voice sounded wistful. "Sometimes I envy you short lived species. Having a home, one place in the universe that you came from and will die in."

She paused, considering, "But that's not the way you see things, is it?" 

"Not really, no," Sam half laughed, one quick sound in the back of his throat. "The planet is too big to feel like home for us. It might as well be the whole universe. A home is much smaller, a town or a house or…"

He paused, thinking about it. 

"To be honest, I'm not really sure. I've never had much of a home myself. Tried a couple of times and it didn't work out."

"Same," Dawn sighed. "I've lived a lot of places. Haven't found a home yet."

"Then I guess we're both drifters," Sam said.

"I guess we are," Dawn agreed.

Those few simple words were the beginnings of trust. 

As the night wore on, Sam began to open up in a way that surprised him. He felt safe for the first time in… he couldn't remember how long. There was no Lucifer, for once, and there was something peaceful, something reassuring, about the deep darkness with no light but the stars and the faintest sliver of moon.

Dawn was open and free with stories of her life, and when Sam finally started in on his own stories, she proved to be an attentive listener too. It was intoxicating, being able to speak so plainly and honestly and just be heard. Sam found himself saying things that he'd never told anyone except for Dean, only unlike Dean, Dawn didn't brush him off. 

He told her about the hurt he'd felt when Dean had come back from hell to find him banishing demons with his mind and immediately treated him like a monster. There had been no listening, no understanding, no working with him to understand or fix the broken things that had brought him to that point. No, not from Dean. Dean was hard nosed, unforgiving, and that callousness had pushed Sam away, pushed him further into Ruby's grip. 

He told her about the self loathing that had taken root then, the way he'd come to believe his brother's instincts and view himself as a monster too. Irredeemable. Broken. Unworthy. And in the throws of that guilt there was no extended hand from his brother, no lifeline, only reassurances that he deserved whatever bad might come. In stepped Lucifer, of course, playing on that fear and loathing so easily, offering the box as the only penance that could stand up to the sin of being Sam Winchester.

Of course Sam had jumped in. It was too easy. Too clear.

And then, when he'd been dragged out by who-knows-what with his soul left behind? He'd hurt Dean. Badly. And while his brother might pretend to not hold it against him, it was there in his every word, in the looks he gave Sam, in the way he could never quite trust.

"You're stronger than him, you know," Dawn had said then, and Sam scoffed before falling into bewildered silence. 

"I mean it," she said. "You've both been knocked around by forces much bigger than yourselves since you were kids. Dean has grown hard from it. Hard and sharp like a blade. You both see the strength in that, but what I see is cracks. He's riddled with them. He can't reach a hand out to you because both of his are full just holding himself together."

There was a tightness in Sam's chest. So many stories tonight, so much pain, it was all near the surface now, ready to spill out. 

"You've never tried to resist or ignore the blows that hit you, Sam," Dawn continued. "You might try to dodge them, avoid them altogether, but once they land, you accept them. You let them cut you, and they cut you deep. You bleed freely, and the both of you take that as a sign of weakness."

She put her hand on Sam's in the darkness, and he realized he was trembling. 

"You might bleed, Sam," she went on, "but you also _ heal _. As the years pass, Dean is going to keep accumulating fractures until even the strongest hands couldn't hold together what remains, and when that day comes, he'll fall to pieces. You, Sam, you're collecting scars, memories. You'll be wounded, for a time, but the core of you beneath all that is still whole."

She squeezed Sam's hand. 

"You can cry now, if you like. In this dark even I can't see you." 

Sam did. Even though he knew it was stupid to do in the desert with limited water supplies, he cried himself out, and for once he didn't even feel sorry. But the night didn't end there. It didn't end with a hollow, too-dry feeling. There were more stories afterward. Happier ones. Stories to make you laugh. And before Sam knew it, the sky was beginning to grow light. 

"Well," Dawn said, looking up at her namesake painted across the world. "You hiked all day yesterday and I'm nine months pregnant. That was a fun night, but I suspect we could both very much use some sleep."

Sam nodded and half expected her to immediately disappear the way angels always were wont to do, but she didn't. She shifted stiffly where she sat and nodded towards his tent. 

"As soon as I leave, Lucifer will be back. I can give you one good rest before I go." Her voice was matter-of-fact, her eyes searching the brightening landscape for nothing in particular.

Sam cast as uneasy glance at the tent. It was meant for only him, but it technically was a two-person tent. He hadn't comfortably fit in a single person tent since he was a teenager. 

"Don't worry," she said. "I wouldn't pass up this chance to sleep in the sun even if you had a full size RV right now."

Of all things, her voice sounded shy. It was bizarre. She'd been nothing but confidant all night and was literally carrying his child. Yet here she was deliberately not looking at him, with a blush blooming on her cheeks. He blushed too. 

"N-no, I couldn't make y-" he stammered, but Dawn cut him off. 

"Sun eater, remember?" She smiled warmly. "I won't burn, I won't dry out, and no wild animals are going to bother me. In fact, the only place safer for me would be in low orbit around the sun itself." 

Sam tipped his head and laughed at the absurdity of it, all awkwardness diffused and draining away. "Hard to argue with that, I guess."

And so it was that Sam drifted off to sleep in the desert, with Lucifer nowhere to be found and a pregnant woman snoring softly just outside his tent.


	3. Desert Sun

It wasn't quite noon when Sam woke again, the heat of the desert day already oppressive. It wasn't the heat that had woken him, though he wasn't quite sure what had. He pushed himself up to a sitting position and groaned. His back was stiff, and he pressed a fist into it as he stretched. He was used to sleeping on bad beds and hard ground. Normally such things didn't bother him, but today, apparently, was the day his body rebelled. The stretching did little to relieve the tightness, but it was bearable. It didn't even hurt, really. It was only uncomfortable. 

Distracted as he was, it took Sam a minute to realize what had woken him. He didn't hear any snoring. No breathing at all.

Cautiously and quietly, Sam pulled himself up into a crouch, tucking the knife into his belt and flipping the safety off on his gun. Even sleeping in the wilderness his weapons were never far from hand. As quietly as he could, he pulled back the slide on his gun until it cocked. Then with one hand aiming and the other on the tent zipper, he slowly unzipped the door and stepped outside. 

At first he didn't see anyone. No Dawn, no animals, no signs of a struggle. There was, however, a small pile of dry branches to one side of the tent and a whole lot of footprints leading off into the scrub. He followed them with his eyes off into the distance, scanning the horizon, and that's when he spotted her. She was far enough away to be a bare finger's width tall against the horizon, but even from that far he could see that she had an arm load of more branches. 

Sam let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding and flicked his gun's safety back on.

"What are you doing, Sam?" he muttered to himself, dropping the magazine from his gun into his palm and pulling back on the slide until the unspent round popped harmlessly out. He snatched it in midair with the half-minded ease of long practice. 

One night without Lucifer and he was already back to reacting gun first, questions later. He needed to be more careful. Dawn could have simply left while he slept, and if she had, who knows what Lucifer might have tricked him into shooting. 

Sam reloaded the round in the magazine and the magazine in the gun, then tucked the gun into his waistband and headed out to meet her. 

When he came near, before he could even ask, she called out in a firm voice, "I'm staying another night." 

Sam brow knit together. "You're what? Why?" 

"This sun is good for me," she said, continuing past him without pausing. "Don't feel obligated to stay though. I'm staying another night here whether or not you do, and tonight I'm going to want a fire. A big one." 

"At least let me carry those." Sam jumped to catch up with her, but Dawn didn't give up her load. 

"They're  _ sticks _ , Sam. They're not heavy." She eyed him with a hint of amusement. "I'm sure you can find something bigger if you look. You'll also want to refill your water supplies. If you're sticking around, that is."

Sam thought about it a moment and nodded. This was the third day. The original plan was to hike today too, then turn around tomorrow morning. If he didn't travel any further out, then he could spend two days here and still make it back to Dean on schedule. 

Dawn nodded back.

"I'd like that," she said, but then quickly moved on. "Water and wood, Sam. As much as you can gather. If it's not enough, I'll make the rest myself, though I'd rather not literally burn resources that way." 

"What are you planning?" Sam asked, not that he was opposed to a good campfire. This felt like something more, however. 

"You'll see if you'd stick around," Dawn answered with a cryptic wink and a laugh. "Wood, Sam. Don't follow me around like a puppy with empty arms." 

He stopped and watched her walk back towards camp for a moment. There was heat in his cheeks, but he chalked it up to the midday sun and set about finding some dead wood. There was a lonely cottonwood he could see not too far off in the distance. It might have dropped some larger pieces for them. Maybe. And either way, he could check for water while he was there. 

* * * * *

It was several hours later, somewhere between three and four in the afternoon, when Sam unceremoniously dropped his last armful of wood at the campsite. It was his last load, but not because there was nothing else to gather, nor because he was tired. It would take more than hauling wood in the desert to tire out a Winchester. No, it was his last load because whatever he'd done to his back was really starting to act up. 

"Gah," he muttered, knuckling his back as he plopped down next to Dawn where she was resting. "What the heck did I do last night?" 

"I'm sorry." She gave him an apologetic look, her mouth twisting into a half smile, half frown. 

"For what?" Sam laughed. "Making me old and dehydrated? Used to be I could sleep on the bare ground for a week straight and not bat an eye."

"Muscle cramp, yeah?" she asked, and Sam nodded. 

"Feels like, yeah," he agreed. "Comes and goes." 

"Having one right now?" she asked. 

"Yup," Sam agreed with a wince. 

"Can you feel where it's coming from?" she asked. "Where the knot is?" 

"I…" Sam paused, frowning. He probed his back with his fingers, but the muscles felt soft and normal despite the pain. "No, actually. I don't feel a knot at all." 

Dawn nodded knowingly. "I don't think this pain is coming from your body."

Sam's frown deepened. He hadn't seen Lucifer since she'd first offered to banish him, and this was out of character for Lucifer anyway. It made a poor torture since it didn't even really hurt that much, though it could be a new tact. He could be playing a long game this time, pretending not to be back. 

"No, he's not back," Dawn confirmed, putting her hand on Sam's. He didn't pull away, though the gesture felt ominous. If the contact would help her put Lucifer back in check, he was all for it.

"This is going to get worse before it gets better," she warned. "But for what it's worth, I'm glad we're together for it. And that Dean doesn't have to see it." 

Old wariness gripped Sam. "Dawn, what's going on?" 

"The connection we have," she started slowly. "Even weak as it is now, it doesn't only go one direction."

"Meaning?" Sam pressed. 

"I've been shielding you," she answered, watching him carefully with her hand still on his. "It felt more respectful, you know? If you wanted to feel what I'm feeling, you'd have asked. So I shielded you."

"And now?" A lump started to form in Sam's throat. 

"And now," she licked her lips, "I'm not doing a very good job of shielding anything, yourself included. My experiences are leaking out. Broadcasting. To anyone or anything connected to me."

"Your…?" Sam swallowed, his eyes widening as he understood what she was saying. At his reaction Dawn visibly relaxed, squeezing his hand once and then letting go. 

"Sam, are you ready to meet your son?" 

Sam nodded, even though it was a lie. 

Dawn smiled, even though she could feel the lie plainly. 


	4. Desert Bonds

The day progressed as well as Sam might have hoped. There wasn't all that much you could do to prepare for a delivery in the desert wilderness, but what they could do, they'd already done. They had a clean blanket, string, and a knife. Their water supplies were refilled by digging down beneath that cottonwood, and when Sam had given up on hauling in more wood, Dawn had closed her eyes, pressed her hand to the earth, and pulled up a neatly stacked pile right out of the ground. They damn near had enough wood for a pyre now, which seemed to satisfy her. Sam tried not to think too hard about what that might mean. 

After that, all they could do was wait. And wait.

Dawn refused to sit it out, preferring to pace circles around their camp. Every 15 minutes or so when the next wave came, she kept right on walking through it. Before long, Sam was pacing with her. Sitting still made the discomfort worse. Moving helped. It didn't exactly relieve anything, but it distracted and kept other cramps or tensions from participating. 

"So I get that we met because of the time loop," Sam said, making conversation to help pass the time. There was something about walking that made him want to talk, like his feet in motion made his brain move too. "There was nothing in the notebook about how we became friends, though, let alone anything more. There have to be stories to tell." 

Dawn chuckled. "Pick one and maybe I'll share." 

"What was the first thing that moved us past just working together?"

Dawn smiled fondly. "The vampires. No question." 

Sam almost missed a step. Of all the things he might have expected, that was not one of them.

"What?" Dawn laughed. "Did you forget why you two were in that town to begin with?" 

"No," Sam shook his head. "There was a nest, big one judging by the number of kills, but smart. Not leaving a trail."

Dawn nodded along. "You and your brother had been there a couple days already, hitting dead ends and false leads."

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "I remember. We flew out of there pretty fast after you showed up, though. Called in other hunters to tackle the case, but no one ever found anything."

Dawn nodded again. "You'd already gotten them, just couldn't remember doing it." 

"So what, we hunted during the time loop?" Sam's brow twitched. It seemed ridiculous. The urgency in the notebook just didn't mesh with taking time out to chase down a dead end case. 

"Not exactly, no," Dawn conceded. "At least not at first. At first we just needed a break, you know? One day off from staring down the impossible."

That made a little more sense. 

"We went to a movie, not that that little town was showing anything interesting, but it was something to do." 

"A movie?" Sam tried not to sound too skeptical. It wasn't out of character exactly, but he was curious how this lead to vampires.

"By that time, I was pretty useless," Dawn continued. "Anything we needed done with my abilities you had to do. We'd both kind of taken it for granted by that point, but it doesn't take energy to see. I can't just shut off my senses, you know? And despite everything you were able to do with my abilities, when it came to senses, you were still quite human."

A wave of pressure descended through Sam's back and radiated across his abdomen. His breath caught, but he forced himself to take the next step and breathe and count. Dawn broke the even pace she had set for a step or two before finding her stride again, and she kept right on talking, though Sam could hear the effort of it in her voice.

"We kind of took for granted that you were the one with powers now," she continued, "and by that point I knew more or less what you and your brother were about, so that afternoon in the theater, I didn't even hesitate to comment on it when I felt someone who wasn't human in the crowd." 

"You felt?" Sam had a harder time talking than Dawn did, but not because of the pain. His experience was only a reflection of hers, weaker, easier to bear. He had a harder time talking because he was still counting. One of them should be keeping track. 

"My senses, the more than human ones, it's pretty easy to spot something inhuman in a crowd of humans. Sticks out like one red apple in a pile of green."

Sam almost sighed with relief as the wave passed. 39 seconds. He didn't remember enough to know what that meant, but it felt right to keep track of it. 

"So you spotted one of the vamps in that theater," Sam repeated, bringing his attention back to the story. 

"Yeah," Dawn agreed. "I commented on it, and your whole demeanor changed. We'd been working together for a while, but that was the first time I'd seen your get-down-to-business face." 

"So we hunted it?" Sam asked, pausing as they completed another circle. He pulled one of the water jugs from the shade of the tent and offered it to Dawn before drinking a long swallow himself. She didn't drink much, not as much as a human should, and certainly not as much as a pregnant woman in the desert should. But then, there were undoubtedly perks to being "more than" human. 

"You debated tracking it back to the others," Dawn continued. "But with only a single day to work with, odds weren't good for finding much intel."

"And I didn't want to waste time chasing shadows on our 'day off'," Sam added. It was easy enough to fill in that blank, and Dawn nodded in confirmation.

"You killed it," she agreed. "No hesitation. Decapitated it, burned the body, buried the ashes, and then saved the result. The next turn of the loop that vamp was simply missing, ashes buried beneath undisturbed ground. Any link between you and the scene vanished like the rest of the day."

"Damn," Sam swore softly. "Kinda wish all kills were that clean."

Dawn chuckled. "Most of them were." 

"Then we found others too?" 

"Oh yeah," Dawn agreed. "Whenever we needed a break we would wander around town until I spotted one. Didn't take long either, at first. There were a lot of them." 

"And that's really how we became friends?" Sam's eyebrows reached for his hairline. It was a little too simple, a little too predictable.

"Not really," Dawn admitted. "That came a little later. Even if the disappearances were unexplained, eventually the vamps had to notice. They might not know who or how, but they knew a hunter-" 

"A trap?" Sam interjected. 

"A trap," Dawn agreed. "We walked right into it. There were a lot of them, almost a dozen, and they were pissed too. We were totally out-matched. They toyed with us for at least an hour, feeding, watching us get weaker. I'm pretty sure I passed out at least once. But they made a mistake."

"Mistake?" Sam's heart was pounding even though it was just a story. He remembered too many tight spots like that, and in almost every one of them, this was the point where Dean busted in to save his ass. 

"They thought it would be funny, I think," Dawn went on. "They couldn't have known." 

"What did they do?" Sam's heart beat faster. 

"They..." Dawn hesitated, eyes darting to Sam's and then away again. "They made you drain me. Every last drop. Held you down and hung me and-" 

"What did I do?" Sam's jaw clenched, his heart pounding for a different reason now.

"You…" Dawn trailed off.

"Tell me," Sam demanded, staring ahead and yet looking at nothing.

"You vaporized them, straight up. All of them. The thermal explosion flattened the nest and the better part of a mile." 

"That's-" Sam choked. "That's one of your _abilities?_"

Dawn shrugged. "It's just dumping energy into the system, overloading it until the atomic bonds pull apart. It takes energy, sure. It takes a lot of energy, but it's not difficult."

"And I…" Sam couldn't even say the words. 

"Harder," Dawn pushed ahead, "was holding your body together through the explosion, but you managed that too. Barely. You kept both our bodies together. And then you... you held my dead body. Just held it, for hours. All the way until reset. At the time I was still resetting to the room next to yours in that awful motel, and when reset came you practically broke down my door. It was the first time I'd seen you cry. I think you were half convinced I wouldn't come back."

Dawn smiled weakly. "But Sam, I always come back." 

Sam didn't speak again for nearly an hour. There was too much to process. So he had drunk her blood, afterall, but it hadn't been his choice. That made it different than with the demons, though no less troubling in the end. Blessedly, Dawn left him to his thoughts and didn't try to force any hollow words of comfort into the silence. She just paced alongside him, a silent partner step after step until he was ready to talk again.

"After that," Sam started to ask, his voice cracking. Dawn stopped him. 

"Drink first," she ordered, veering to the tent and fishing out the water jug. "And maybe eat one of those bars you brought."

Sam quietly obeyed, and felt a bit better for it.

"After that," he asked again, feeling more steady than the first time, "did I drink from you again?" 

Dawn shook her head, and Sam let out a long relieved breath. 

"You didn't have to," she added carefully. "That power you drew from me? It wasn't power exactly. It was _ connection._ This bond we still share, that's when it was forged."

"Damn," Sam breathed.

"As best I can tell," Dawn continued, "the actual power you draw on when you use my abilities is your own soul." 

"What?" Sam frowned. 

"When I use my abilities, it draws on my soul as the power source," she explained. "Except my soul transcends spacetime. It… It cuts across the grain, so to speak, rather than sitting within it. My soul didn't reset with each loop, just dwindled further and further."

"But my soul did reset." Sam shook his head. 

"It did," Dawn agreed, a note of pride creeping into her voice, "and that made you damned powerful in there." 

Sam snorted. "Guess I'm useful to keep around. You know, just in case time ever decides to go sideways." 

Dawn laughed. "You are indeed."


	5. Desert Smoke

There were more stories that day before the sun set, though none quite as earth shattering as that first one. There was a funny story about raiding an entire produce stand 40 miles away just so they could eat something different for a change, which was funnier for Dean's appalled reactions scattered throughout. There were a handful of cute stories about pranking Castiel with things a human Sam shouldn't have been able to do. And there was even an awkward story about being walked in on once by Dean. 

The stories passed the time, and soon the sun was setting.

Dawn paused in her pacing to look out at the colorful horizon, almost immediately stiffening with another wave of pain. They were coming frequently now. She could still walk and talk through them, but only barely. Sam counted this one out. 54 seconds. 

"We should build that fire now," Dawn suggested. "Soon the real work will begin." 

Sam nodded soberly and set about the task of starting a fire. They didn't make the big blaze that their woodpile suggested was coming, though. They made a pretty average campfire, but as the chill of the desert night swiftly descended, Sam was surprised at just how good the heat felt. Their pacing shifted closer and closer to the fire as the darkness set in, punctuated every couple of minutes by a new wave of pain. 

The first time Dawn's legs failed her, Sam felt helpless. He caught her, held her, supported her as best he could, but touching her blazed their bond to life just when it was least welcome. There was no hiding just how wide the gap was between what he felt compared to what she did. Her back was marble beneath his hands, so hard that it didn't seem human at all, but Sam held her as best he could. He stopped her from falling, in any case, and when the pain passed he'd counted out 63 seconds.

He wished he knew more, wished he knew how long this would go on or just how bad it was going to get.

Dawn's stories slowed down then, interrupted so frequently that it was hard to hold the thread of them, and that, of course, made the time drag longer. Sam tried to tell his own stories instead then, but Dawn's attention came and went. Not knowing what else to do, however, he stubbornly stuck with it. 

He started with more recent stories, telling her about the rich witch couple whose marital troubles had spilled out over a whole town. They'd only barely gotten out of that one by playing at couples counseling while being tossed around like rag dolls. He told her about their run in with an Egyptian god who had put Dean on trial and about traveling back in time to the wild west to collect the ashes of a Phoenix. 

Even after she couldn't keep her feet, after he himself found it hard to do much moving, Sam still kept telling stories. Dawn knelt on the ground, one knee down and the other up where she could lean heavily on it. Sam knelt with her, behind her, arms around her and supporting her, and told her about the time when an angel had massively altered the timeline just to prevent one song from being written. Between heavy breaths she smiled, and Sam opened his mouth to keep going but was interrupted by a hot wet rush down his thigh where it pressed against her. 

For one terrified heartbeat he was certain it was blood. He'd felt too much hot blood against his skin in his life, but when he startled back, it wasn't dark. Not blood. Her water had broken.

There was no bed out here, no chairs, nothing Dawn could rest on except a sleeping bag and the rapidly cooling earth, and she didn't want to lie down. He couldn't blame her, not when so much of the intensity was focused in her back. So Sam pulled close again and knelt there, holding her in front of their small fire, for what felt like hours. Every now and then they would move in the dwindling gaps between pain, just enough to add another log to the fire, to get water, to stretch. Then right back to kneeling and offering mindless stories to the flames. 

He told her about the time he and his brother had been sent to an alternate reality where they were TV stars acting out their real lives as a fiction. He told her about crop circle aliens that turned out to be fairies and a skinwalker living as a family pet and a prophet unwittingly writing novels of real life. 

Sam soon lost all sense of time. Time was tiny isolated moments between pain, with nothing before and nothing after. Time had no meaning. Not until somewhere in the long dark hours of the night, Dawn interrupted him.

"I'm going to push now." 

Things moved quickly then, or that's what he would have said if time had any meaning just then. All he knew was that Dawn pushed, and the spillover pain was so strong that sweat beaded on his brow and his head grew light. She didn't scream or swear or any of the things popular media had conditioned him to expect. She strained and grunted for what might have been minutes or hours. He couldn't have said. Then there was a soft wet thump and a cry in the night. 

Dawn scooped up the babe faster than Sam could react, and the babe was nothing like the movies either. He was covered in waxy vernix and desert dust, scrawny and not at all cute. But Dawn traced a finger over the babe's skin, and where it passed a clean track was left behind. It was the kind of thing he might have expected from any angel, and since Dawn was almost an angel herself it shouldn't have surprised him. This time, however, Sam could almost see the way of it. It was like peeking through the cracks of reality. Dawn was collecting the unneeded matter back into herself, cleaning the babe by reclaiming a part of her own body. 

Sam shivered, and not from the chill of the night. With a shaking hand he took the string they had prepared. He didn't know a whole lot, but this part he knew. He knew how to cut the cord without bleeding mother or child to death. Dawn made room for him to do it, too, but when he touched the cord his hands trembled worse.

It was like touching a live wire of emotion and awareness. He could feel her, could feel all of her. Her aches and pains and the dizzying high of chemicals her body was releasing. There was confusion and fear and cold threaded through as well, however, and concern flickered through his mind before realization caught up with him. 

He was feeling the child's emotions as well. _ His _ child's emotions. 

Something shifted inside him, and without thinking, Sam made soft nothing noises to the babe. 

"The cord," Dawn prompted, and Sam realized he'd stopped moving.

"Right." He shook his head and got back to it. He tied the string around the umbilical cord in two places, grabbed the knife, and severed the cord with one quick jerk. 

Then, with much steadier hands, he found the blanket and helped Dawn tie it into a sling over her shoulder. She nestled the newborn into it against her chest and let out a long, slow breath of relief. 

"We're not done yet," she said. "But the worst is passed now." 

Sam nodded, though he didn't quite know what she meant. With the adrenaline draining away his mind didn't seem to be working right. Sleep. He wanted nothing more than to sleep for a year, right here on the desert floor. 

"Sam, help me build up the fire," Dawn instructed gently. "Big this time. As big as we can make it. Our son deserves a proper welcome." 

Sam nodded again and set to it. He'd built so many pyres in his life that building a large, hot fire was mechanical now. It didn't require thought. If he'd been thinking, he might have questioned what the fire was for, but he didn't. At least, not until the next contraction came. Then for one terrified heartbeat, he thought there were twins and the fire was meant for the younger, but Dawn touched his arm and the fear drained out of him just as quickly as it had appeared. Images and understanding flitted through his mind, and he was both too tired and too relieved to pay attention to how they'd gotten there.

It was only the placenta coming this time, and it would be easier.

Sam wavered in and out of awareness for the rest of it. Dawn passed the afterbirth with little trouble, then gathered it up and tossed it on their roaring bonfire. A scattering of angry sparks leapt upward, and while it was probably the imaginings of an overly tired mind, Sam swore he could feel the memories of the night among them. This spark was a story of vampires, that one was the moment he had caught Dawn as she stumbled, and that big one over there was a wild tale about the old west. Each spark carried some part of tonight upward, shouting their tale to the heavens for any who would listen.

There were no spoken words this time, no new stories to add. Everything that needed to be said had been said, so they watched the thick smoke rise in silence, entranced as much by fatigue as by wonder at what they had just survived.


	6. Unwelcome Rescue

Sam and Dawn both slept well into the next day, finally rousing at the sound of an engine in the distance. Sam groggily stumbled out of his tent. He felt hungover and knew it was dehydration. He hadn't drunk nearly as much water as he should have last night, but hey, at least he'd found his tent and wasn't sunburned too. 

Dawn smirked at him, looking for all the world as if she had spent the night at a spa and not in the grip of labor. 

"Cheater," Sam complained, reaching for a jug of water and forcing himself to drink only a little. He wanted to chug it, but he knew better. 

Dawn shrugged, her grin deepening. "I've gotta say, I hadn't planned to do this in the desert, but it was an excellent idea. Thank you for that." 

"You're welcome?" Sam took another sip and peered blearily at the approaching vehicle. There were no roads out here, so he expected it to be something rugged, something suitable to the terrain, with a high frame and thick tires. He did not expect a tiny blue commuter. He also did not expect the person who jumped out of the driver's seat almost before the car had stopped. 

"Becky?" He knew he was making a face, but she only smiled at him, eyes practically sparkling. 

"Sam!" Becky's whole frame jolted with her excitement. "You're out here working a case? Without Dean?" 

"Y-yeah," Sam lied, tripping over the thought of Becky learning the truth. 

"I saw your fire last night." She was beaming, eyes flicking to the ash pile remains of the bonfire, skittering past the bloody patch of earth, and jerking to a halt on Dawn. Some of the light faded from her eyes. 

"Sam saved me," Dawn offered, sounding as tired as she should have been. Hell, she looked that tired too now, a far cry from the smug, well rested person she'd been a few moments ago. Sam blinked and looked again. It was like he was seeing two people in Dawn's one skin. He could see her, the real her, well rested and sharp, overlaid on this other version. One he was seeing with his eyes, and the other...

He shook his head. He couldn't explain it. He was seeing it, but it was more like a feeling. He could _ feel _ that she wasn't tired. He could feel the energy building just beneath her skin. Beneath his own skin?

"What kind of case was it?" Becky's attention snapped back to Sam, and Sam blinked slowly as his mind churned for words.

"I-it.." He made an awkward smile. 

"It was a creature from space," Dawn supplied easily, offering a weak smile. "It sounds crazy, I know, but it was. Sam sent it back. You know, with the smoke you saw. Or he sent a part of it back at least. I don't think the rest of it will come around these parts again in a long while."

Sam frowned at the ease of her half truths, or maybe at how close they actually were to the real truth. 

"I'm sorry… Becky?" Dawn asked. The color suddenly drained from her face, and where Sam normally would have jumped to action, he held back. He could feel this too, the farce of it. He could feel whatever it was that she was doing, and she _ was _ doing it. This wasn't weakness or sickness or injury. This was intentional, as normal and natural to her as smiling, except it made her look and sound like she might fall over at any second.

Becky took the bait, regarding Dawn with a reluctant pout on her lips. "You're hurt."

It was a statement, not a question, but Dawn inclined her head. 

"I'm glad you found us," Dawn continued, relief washing over her features. "I don't think I'm walking out of here, and as strong as he is, I'd really hate to make Sam carry me. Do you think you could give us a lift back to town?"

Becky nodded, resolve lighting her eyes. "I can help!" 

Breaking camp didn't take long, and before they knew it they were all packed into Becky's little car trundling through desert dust. Sam winced at the damage their tracks left behind, and marveled briefly at Becky's bizarre resourceful determination. How the hell had she found them?

What a strange camping trip this had been. The plan was for three days out, three days back. Instead he'd gotten two days out, one day delivering a baby -his baby- and now likely to be one day on the town with Becky, depending on how quickly he could ditch her and find Dean again.

Not the trip he had planned at all. 

They dropped Dawn off at the nearest bus station, and Sam would have gone with her if Becky would have left it there. This was Becky though.

"I'll be fine," Dawn assured him. "And I'll keep in touch. Take care of yourself."

As they drove away, Sam could feel Dawn's presence as a point in space behind them, growing further and further away. Whatever bond they shared was stronger now than it had been in a long time, and this time it was open. Unshielded. Eventually though, his sense of her dwindled to nothing but a general direction. 

That was about when Lucifer appeared in the back seat. 

"Sammy! Long time no chat!"

Sam almost jumped, and while he managed to catch himself, he still made a half strangled sound in the back of his throat which he covered as a cough. 

"Sam, are you alright?" Becky asked, putting one hand on his knee.

"Y-yeah," Sam lied, pulling his leg away. There wasn't much room to move though, as big as he was in this tiny car. "Just dust. I could use a drink. And some food." 

"Well we're in the right place for both!" Becky said cheerily. 

"What a great trip!" Lucifer was just as cheerful. "Sam, you wouldn't believe the things I've learned. We should've hooked up with Dawn ages ago."

Sam's jaw clenched, and his eyes flicked to Becky to see if she'd noticed the change in demeanor. She was happy as ever, though, practically humming as she eyed each sign for eateries.

"Oh Sam." Lucifer patted him on the shoulder. "I can't wait to show you my new tricks. We're gonna have so much fun." 

Sam grimaced. Becky _ and _ Lucifer. It was going to be a very bad day.


End file.
